


can't take faerie from the kid

by greywardenblue



Series: shelter me [2]
Category: October Daye Series - Seanan McGuire
Genre: Gen, Not Canon Compliant - The Unkindest Tide (October Daye), October "Toby" Daye is in Denial, POV October "Toby" Daye, POV Tybalt (October Daye), at least at the beginning, cat shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:34:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24878545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywardenblue/pseuds/greywardenblue
Summary: It is the duty of the King of Cats to take care of his people, both mortal and fae. Then the last person Tybalt expects walks through the door of his favourite cat shelter, which puts him in an awkward situation of keeping a secret from October. That works surprisingly well, at least until Danny finds out and reports back...This is a companion piece to “take the kid from faerie” that fills in some blanks from Toby and Tybalt’s POVs.
Relationships: Gillian Daye Marks & Tybalt, October "Toby" Daye/Tybalt
Series: shelter me [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1422295
Comments: 12
Kudos: 38





	can't take faerie from the kid

**Author's Note:**

> The first part of this, "take the kid from faerie" was written before the Unkindest Tide, so even though I finished this part way too late, it still doesn't include the events of that book.

**Summer, 2010**

**TYBALT**

“No! No, that is all wrong. It’s like you folk get up on two legs and lose all sense of perspective. No offense to you and yours of course, it’s just what I think. No, please move it more to the right. Yes, that is much better.”

Tybalt rolled his eyes and followed the instructions with an indulging smile. After all, what good was a king who couldn’t serve his people?

Lady Marshmallow had been the companion of Leah’s grandmother for over twenty years, raised by the old woman since kittenhood - a great number of years for a mortal cat to live, but perhaps not that unusual if you added just a bit of Cait Sidhe blood. When the old woman died, none of the relatives could afford to take her in - Leah’s own apartment didn’t allow pets - so she ended up at the cat shelter. Tybalt had offered the comforts of his Court many times, but the Lady has elected to stay close to Leah in her final years. And really, over a certain age, you could hardly expect a cat to care much for such silly things as titles. 

(That certain age was usually three minutes after birth.)

Finally content with her seat, Lady Marshmallow settled on the pillow on the top shelf, surveying the room before her. Tybalt’s attention was soon claimed by another one of his subjects’ pleas, and he barely noticed the door opening - at least until all the cats started shouting about food and crowding around the newcomer.

Tybalt let out a sigh. “Behave,” he said warningly, then looked up, expecting to see Leah - and paused. The girl was eerily familiar, and for a moment he thought his teenage niece’s old playmate decided to pay him a visit. But no, he hasn’t seen October since she gravely offended him in Tamed Lightning. -- Why he was offended by not being let it on a secret by someone he was hardly close to, that was another question. And yet, it stung.

“Neat trick,” the girl said. “Was I interrupting something?”

Tybalt blinked twice to pull himself out of his thoughts.

“My name is Rand,” he lied as he took a bag of food from her. “And you are?”

“Gillian. I’m new.”

He suppressed a smile as he carried on with the niceties. This was going to be interesting.

**Fall, 2010**

Tybalt had always pitied those to whom changing forms didn’t come naturally. Being a four-legged cat offered a freedom of movement he did not have on two legs - and more, he was understood by few. This sometimes proved frustrating, but other times it was a great excuse. He entered the shelter by Kate’s side, and bristled when Gillian jumped up from the counter and started bombarding the girl with questions.

He had long changed his mind about this little secret being fun. It started as something he could later rub in October’s face, but now October was gone after doing him a great favor, and Gillian was calling him a  _ friend _ . Safe to say, things have gotten out of hand.

His eyes met Gillian’s, and he blinked slowly. _ I’m sorry _ , he tried to say.  _ I wish I deserved to face you right now _ .

**Spring, 2011**

“Whenever you’re ready,” Tybalt said.

Gillian looked up in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve been quiet and moody all day. I’m ready to listen, whenever you’re ready to talk.”

She was quiet for a little longer, then finally said, “I saw my mother on the street yesterday.”

That caught his attention. “Your mother?”

Gillian shrugged. “Yeah. Well, kind of. My bio mother.” Tybalt forced his face into a neutral expression to avoid revealing his lack of surprise. “My dad’s wife is the one who raised me, and I call her mother, but she’s not the one who gave birth to me. She married dad when I was little, a few years after my other mother walked out on us.”

Tybalt frowned. That was not how he would have phrased it.

“What do you mean, she walked out on you?”

“I mean, she just disappeared one day. No word, no card, no nothing. We were on the phone with her earlier, my dad says, and then she just… didn’t come home.” Gillian closed a cabinet door with a bit more force than necessary. “We heard nothing from her for fourteen years, and then not long ago she showed up at our door, like nothing happened. My mom and dad sent her away.”

“They didn’t let you talk to her?” Tybalt asked carefully.

“I didn’t  _ want _ to talk to her!” Gillian snapped. “Would you? If somebody just abandoned you like that?”

“If I had no idea  _ why _ they left? Yes, I imagine I would give them a chance to tell me.”

Gillian shook her head. “What reason could she have for not even contacting us at all for fourteen years?”

Tybalt was silent, wondering how much to reveal. “Maybe she couldn’t contact you. Maybe she was kidnapped, or kept somewhere…”

Gillian rolled her eyes. “And then she just came back? Please. This is real life.”

Tybalt felt anger rising in him, a somewhat surprising urge to defend October, his little fish. “How can you judge someone if you’re not going to hear them out? Maybe your mother is a wonderful, brave woman who was just as hurt to leave you as you were.”

Gillian was silent for a moment, then turned away. “I want to stay friends with you, so I think we should stop talking.” She set down the bowl she’d been washing and walked away. Tybalt let her.

**Summer, 2012**

**TOBY**

Life refused to stop after Connor died and Gillian chose human. Life was a stubborn jerk like that.

Toby was glad that Dean took over Goldengreen, because at least this way she didn’t have to be responsible for a moody knowe and a group of people who were still grieving their previous caretaker. (After Connor’s death, Toby somehow missed Lily even more. The grief added up to consume her completely.)

The first time she saw Tybalt after the scene in Muir Woods was when he came over to help with the moving, although his “help” mostly consisted of giving unwanted decoration advice while Danny hauled the newly bought heavy furniture into the new place with ease and Quentin and Raj bickered in the background.

She tried to keep herself busy, but that was difficult when she could barely stand being around people. Moving into a bigger house instead of being cooped up in a small apartment with three adults and two cats and the occasional teenage boy helped a little bit, and she was quietly thankful to Sylvester for the timing. 

Still, the bigger house didn’t solve everything. Seeing May and Jazz happy together stung sometimes, and while she never commented on it and tried her damn best not to show it, she could feel her friends walking on eggshells around her. Knowing that she made them feel guilty about being happy made her even more miserable, and the cycle continued.

Although Quentin was the only one who officially lived with them, they had already gotten used to Raj hanging out on the couch when they still lived in the apartment. Now that Quentin had his own room, Toby knew that Raj slept over more, and she could hear them play video games or trade teasing jokes when she came downstairs on the equivalent of their mornings. 

The first time she saw Tybalt in the kitchen was a surprise. He smiled at her empathically and made small talk, but didn’t force the conversation when she clearly wasn’t up for it. He wandered off to talk to May, Jazz or the boys, but he was there. He was there quite often, and somehow his quiet presence - the quiet presence of all her friends - made Toby feel better even if they didn’t talk.

On Tybalt’s last visit, Toby thrust his jacket back at her, and at his confused protests she mumbled something about how she wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while and maybe he wanted to wear it for a week or so before giving it back. If he thought that was strange, he didn’t say anything, and Toby didn’t explain further. He took the jacket with him.

Tonight, May and Jazz were out on a date and Quentin and Raj were out on what they claimed wasn’t a date, and Toby had no human cases lined up or anything in particular to do. On those nights, she mostly wandered aimlessly around the house. She briefly considered going out and reached for her jacket, but it wasn’t there. It took her a few moments to remember that she had given it to Tybalt. Why did she do that?

She suddenly remembered the feeling of Tybalt’s hand brushing against hers when he took the milk from her. She pushed the thought down violently, like she always did. She pushed down the memory of Tybalt’s hand resting on her shoulder as he kissed her. She pushed down the thought of Tybalt uncomfortably sitting in her car, and yet not leaving, not until she asked him. She pushed down the thought of Tybalt giving her jacket back after leaving it, and the leather smelling like him, embracing her.

_ Fucking hell _ , the thought came to her, as if from a dream,  _ I’m in love with Tybalt _ .

She tried to reject the thought immediately. She loved Connor still, and it was a betrayal to even think about another man, and yet… she’d been thinking about Tybalt for a very long time. She had been looking at him long before Tamed Lightning, but never when he could see. What was the point of revealing something that would never be returned?

Somebody knocked on the door and she wiped her face quickly, wondering if it was worth bothering with a human disguise. Whoever actually knocked after 1am was very unlikely to be human.

“Toby? You there?” 

Toby opened the door and frowned at Danny. “Don’t wake the neighbours, we don’t need them calling the police over a noise complaint again.” Her eyes travelled down to Danny’s hands and widened in surprise. “Where did you get that?”

Danny handed her jacket back to her, and she raised it to bury her face in it without thinking about it. It smelled of pennyroyal and musk like it was supposed to. “Is Tybalt okay?” she asked immediately. Danny looked nervous.

“What? Yes, of course, he’s fine. But I need to tell you something. Can I come in?”

Toby stepped aside to let him in, growing more worried by the second.

She was speechless as Danny told her the story. Tybalt called him from an unfamiliar number - not that he had a familiar number - and gave him a street name. For some reason, he introduced himself as Rand, but when Danny recognised him based on the voice and asked if it was Tybalt, he said yes. That was weird already.

When Danny arrived, Tybalt was sitting on a bench with a teenage girl who was wearing Toby’s jacket. Tybalt helped her in the car and asked her if she was going to be okay alone, then told Danny he’d pay for her ride later.

Tybalt called the girl Gillian.

Toby sat on the couch with the jacket in her hands, clutching it like a lifeline. Her earlier thoughts about Tybalt were drowned out by confusion and anger. If Tybalt had met Gillian, then why didn’t he come straight to her? Why didn’t he step out of the shadows and get here long before Danny could have? Where was he? What was  _ happening _ ?

She thanked Danny for telling her and didn’t even notice - a clear sign that she wasn’t thinking clearly, but Danny didn’t say anything - then asked him to drive her to the park.

\---

“Tybalt!”

Once, Toby stood in a dark alleyway shouting for Tybalt in the cold, and he only showed up when she was just about to leave. She had long suspected he had been there earlier, watching her, and simply chose the most dramatic moment to appear.

Once, Toby sent someone begging at the bushes in a frankly embarrassing way to get his attention. It worked, even if he was unimpressed.

This time, all she had to do was shout his name into the darkness of Golden Gate Park twice.

“You’re going to attract unwanted attention if you shout too much,” Tybalt said from behind her. Toby spun around, thrusting the jacket in his hands.

“Explain,” she said. “And don’t play stupid. Don’t say something like ‘this is clearly a jacket’ because I swear by Oberon’s name I will punch you. Explain to me why Danny saw you with my daughter tonight.”

Tybalt sighed, and Toby really hoped, for his sake, than he’d know better than to put up a fight. “It is the duty of a King of Cats to care for all his subjects. That includes my mortal subjects, and the places where many of them live together. I have been visiting the shelters around the city regularly, either personally or through my substitutes.” Toby opened her mouth to ask how any of this was relevant, but Tybalt raised a hand to stop her. “I didn’t expect Gillian to show up at one of them, but her presence couldn’t stop me from doing my duty. It’s true that I could have avoided her, but… I suppose I was curious.” He looked like he was going to say something else, but couldn’t find the right words. That was rare.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Toby asked, keeping her anger in check for now.

“What would you have done, if I had told you? Try to meet her when she doesn’t want to see you? Ask me to tell you how she’s doing? You couldn’t have stopped yourself, and if I had indulged you, I would have been as good as a spy. The exact thing she will accuse me of doing if she ever finds out I know you, despite the fact that I did my best to avoid being one.”

Toby opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. Of course she would have wanted to see Gillian, but she already knew where the girl lived. How was waiting for her around the shelter any different from stalking her at her house when she clearly wanted to have nothing to do with her mother?

“It’s not fair,” she said quietly, knowing that she sounded childish. “It’s not  _ fair _ . How long, Tybalt? How long have you been talking to her and watching over her and-- and doing that I should have been doing?”

Tybalt stepped closer and took her hands in his, the jacket flung over his shoulder. She almost yanked her hands back impulsively, but she didn’t. “I never wanted to take this from you,” he said quietly. “Believe me, every day I tried to think of ways to encourage her to let you in, but if I had revealed I knew you, she would have rejected me too. I didn’t know what to do. You are angry with me because I did wrong, and I accept it, but I don’t know what the right thing would have been.”

“But you’ve already been spying on her,” Toby said suddenly, remembering something. “When I gave her the Choice, she asked me… she asked me if I sent the cats.” Tybalt flinched, but she continued. “She told me that the cats have been watching over her. I forgot about it because…” Because losing both Connor and Gillian pushed out everything else for months. She swallowed. “So what’s that about?”

Her hands were still in Tybalt’s, and he was drawing small circles on them with his thumb. Toby didn’t pull away. It was nice to have something to hold on to. How many times did she falter, and have Tybalt catch her? How many times did she want to reach out, but stopped herself?

“Cats take care of lost things,” Tybalt said finally. “You were lost, and we couldn’t find you. You were right there, but we couldn’t…” He shook his head. “We couldn’t take care of you, so we did the next best thing. We watched over your daughter. It was never meant to be spying. We only ever did it to protect her when you couldn’t.”

Toby noticed how she kept saying “we”, but she couldn’t imagine any other cat going to the trouble of watching Gillian while she was busy being a fish. Julie might have liked her enough back then, but it simply wouldn’t have occurred to her to do something like that, and she never had another cat like her.

She hadn’t thought she did.

The tears from earlier returned, and she let them fall, even as Tybalt let go of her hand to reach up and wipe them away. It was easy, too easy to pretend Tybalt didn’t care when he shut the doors of his Court in her face, even if he did it because his people were dying. It was easy to pretend Tybalt didn’t care when Connor held her close and safe and Tybalt was away. It was easy to pretend Tybalt didn’t care when Connor was dead, and just thinking of another man caring about her made her feel guilty.

It was so hard, so damn hard to pretend when he carried her home in his arms, when he caught her when she fainted, when he carried her through the shadows at the cost of his own life, when he told her to come back to him. Toby lied, but the blood didn’t.  _ Lost and gone for so long, and now she’s come back to us, now she’s come back to  _ me _ . . . _

When she couldn’t find the words, it was easier to borrow someone else’s. “I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest,” she whispered into the silence between them. 

Tybalt looked up immediately, his eyes going wide with surprise. “What did you just say?” he demanded, not unkindly.

Toby shook her head, almost laughing at the absurdity of it. “I said I’m in love with you, and I’m tired of pretending I’m not.” She turned her face away and waited for the waves to crash above her head, surrendering to whatever came next.

Tybalt put his hands on her waist and pulled her closer. When she still didn’t look at him, he kissed the side of her neck briefly. She shivered at the contact and turned to face him again. He was smiling.

“I’m tired of pretending, too,” he said. “I love you, October.” He laughed then, and added with a grin, “I do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is not that strange?”

Toby didn’t reply by saying she’d stop his mouth - she simply did it. She was vaguely aware that this was the first time she kissed Tybalt instead of the other way around, and after all that time telling herself this was the stupidest idea she ever had, it tasted all the sweeter.

“I thought you were mad at me,” Tybalt whispered into her mouth.

“Oh, I’m furious with you,” she said, watching the confusion grow on his face. “You know I hate secrets, and you hurt me, and maybe you could have found a better way to handle it. But you hurt me because you placed my daughter’s privacy and comfort over my feelings. How could I stay mad at you for that?”

Tybalt kissed her again. This time, there was no hurry. No need to fake an argument, no life-threatening Goblin assassins. Nobody in the park other than them. They kissed for a long time, and when they didn’t, Toby put her head on Tybalt’s shoulder and they stood there, holding each other.

“What is she like?” Toby asked quietly. “I’m not asking you to tell me everything she told you, or to betray her trust… but please, just give me… something.”

“I suppose it’s only fair,” Tybalt murmured into her hair. “I told her a lot about you.”

Toby raised her head so quickly that she bumped it against Tybalt’s chin. She didn’t care. “You what?”

“I didn’t tell her it was you, of course. But I spoke about my friend that I…” Tybalt glanced away, and Toby could have sworn he was blushing. “My friend that I treasure very much.”

Toby stared. Then she stared more. Then she burst out laughing. “You told my daughter you’re in love with me? Before you told me?”

Tybalt looked embarrassed. “Well, never said it was  _ you _ . Just  _ someone _ . And it was so hard, Toby. To hold myself back from telling her that I knew her mother, and she is wonderful…”

Toby stopped his mouth.

**Winter, 2013**

**TYBALT**

It was easy to praise October without saying her name, to talk about her virtues and her smile, to prepare for a future when maybe Gillian will hear the truth and realize it was all about her mother. It was easy to grow to love Gillian as a daughter, silently and in secret without telling either of them. It was the easiest thing in the world.

Carrying the light body of a young woman through the shadows should have been easy too, but it wasn’t.

“Hold fast, kitten, please hold fast, or I fear your mother will chase you to a place I cannot follow.”

There was another body cradled in his arms, bigger than this but so similar, so fragile, so quickly leaving. It felt like forever ago. He had begged her, too, the same way he did now.  _ Toby, don’t be dead, don’t be dead _ .

He ran as fast as he could, and he reached the sea witch just in time.

\--

_ “It’s called Ash. It’s a retelling of Cinderella with fairies. There’s this girl, Ash, and her mother dies but she thinks the fairies took her so she wants to go away with them too.” _

_ “How does it end?” _


End file.
